June 16 Lecture – CRISPR helps answer basic questions

with Dr. Nipam Patel

Saturday June 16, 2018 at 11:00 AM

CRISPR technology has emerged as a wonderful tool for gene editing that has enormous implications for improving human health, but many scientists have also used it to make remarkable advances in asking very basic biology questions, particularly in animals that might have been previously relatively intractable to experimental manipulations. Dr. Nipam Patel will give examples from his lab’s work on the evolution of crustacean limbs and the color patterns of butterfly wings.

CRISPR - genetic effect on butterfly wing patterns

Professor Nipam Patel

Nipam Patel is a professor in the Molecular & Cell Biology Department at the University of California, Berkeley. His research program centers on the study of the evolution of development mechanisms with a focus on the genes that regulate segmentation and regionalization of the body plan. Another major area of research in the lab centers on investigating the function of the Drosophila segmentation genes during neuronal development and understanding how these genes may have contributed to the evolution of neural complexity.